


what e'er drifts from one place is with the tide to another brought

by SpaceguyLewis



Series: Big God [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drowning, Drugging, Human Sacrifice, Low Chaos, M/M, Magic, Memory Loss, Not Dishonored 2 Compliant, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Royal Spymaster Daud (Dishonored), The Void, Whales, apotheosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceguyLewis/pseuds/SpaceguyLewis
Summary: There will always be those who wish to bend the Void to their will, and there is more than one way to make a god.





	1. The Man

**Author's Note:**

> so my laptop isn't powerful enough to run dishonored 2 or DotO, but i have a firm grasp on what happens in DotO so while that's "canon" for this, dishonored 2 both happened and did not. it's schrodinger's dishonored

“We may have a problem.”

As if the day hadn’t been long enough.

Corvo set his pen down. The practical looking gunmetal gray barrel clinked softly against the dark wood of his desk, and he massaged the bridge of his nose at Daud’s words. After a moment he folded his hands upon the desk top and nodded at the grizzled Spymaster to continue.

“A cult devoted to the Outsider has been gaining power in northern Gristol. Usually I wouldn’t bother you with this sort of thing, but their rhetoric has… inspired some remnants of the Morley rebels to try and undermine the crown via accusations of heresy. Again.”

“What do you need me to do?” Corvo asked, his gaze morose as he watched Daud settle into the armchair on the other side of his desk. Now, ten years after… everything happened, their relationship was strained at worst and playfully antagonistic at best. More often than not, however, they were professional and polite in dealing with each other. They both had the same goal after Daud had killed Jessamine: keeping Emly safe hand helping her become the best empress she could be.

“Part of the Morley rebels have holed up in the upper floors of a tenement on Kaldwin Bridge. It was condemned right after the Plague Cure was made, but it fell through the cracks with everything that happened after the interregnum. I need you to case it, find any evidence you can, and bring it back to me.” Daud produced a map and handed it to Corvo. There was something odd in the Royal Spymaster’s scarred face, and Corvo frowned as he took the map from him.

“What is it, Daud?” he asked, and for a moment it seemed as if Daud would wave Corvo’s concern away as usual.

“I… I just have a bad feeling. Watch yourself when you’re out there, Attano. But don’t worry about Emily - I’ll watch her for you.” He reassured, the smallest of smiles quirking his lips.

“It’s my job to worry, Daud.” Corvo let out a tired laugh. “But thank you.” The Spymaster stood, and made a half-turn towards the door before looking back at Corvo.

“Before I go, Lord Protector, one more thing - ” Corvo met his eyes, immediately suspicious of the mischievous twinkle there. “ - you’ve got ink on your nose.” Then he dissolved into flakes of ash as he transversed away. Corvo sighed again and drew a handkerchief from within his desk and wiped his face, smiling softly at the midnight blue ink that had come off upon the striped linen.

* * *

 Now Corvo was perched on the roof of a building directly across the street from the tenement. The night was cold; a dense fog had rolled in from the sea and begun to shroud the city in a white cloak of mist. Through the brume, Corvo could see amethyst purple light filtering through the haphazardly boarded up windows on the top floor. There was a ventilation duct running just beneath the windowsill, just wide enough for Corvo to perch on. He took a deep breath, calling upon the power of the Outsider’s Mark. He lifted his hand, made a grasping motion at the duct, and _blinked_. In a rush of air and a spark of arcane blue light, Corvo now perched upon the duct. He unfolded his blade and pried off the shoddily nailed down planks, slipping into the apartment through the gap.

It was like stepping back in time ten years, to the height of the Rat Plague. The sick-sweet smell of decomposing bodies clogged the humid air, and Corvo grimaced behind the dark scarf covering his face. An Outsider shrine was assembled haphazardly in one corner, a humming rune and bone-charm placed upon the violet cloth covering the top. He moved forward cautiously, gauging the lightness of his steps against the creak of the ancient floorboards. As Corvo reached for the rune, he heard the creak of a crossbow string being pulled taut, and whirled around.

But Corvo was too late. The bolt struck him in the shoulder, sending him staggering back against the shrine, which collapsed when he put his weight on it. He fell into a pile of splintered wood and moth eaten cloth, hand clawing at the bolt in his shoulder. He yanked it out and let out a curse when a wave of dizziness washed over him - a sleep bolt. Corvo fought to return to his feet, but only fell forward onto the floor in front of his attacker.  He scrabbled at the floorboards, but his hands were caught and bound as his vision blurred and sparks of numbness crackled behind his eyelids. He felt his hand-wrap being peeled away, and people - cultists, judging by their odd garb and hideous wood masks - poured into the room, assembling around him in a loose circle. At the sight of his Mark, they tittered and chattered in excitement. He stared up at them and their driftwood masks, grotesquely carved and death pale. Their leader, or whom he supposed was their leader, released his Marked hand and addressed their compatriots.   
  
“We have caught him, siblings. We caught the Outsider’s Favorite.”   
  
Then the bolt took hold at last, and he slipped into unconsciousness.   
  
Corvo slept fitfully. His dreams were filled with glacier-light, cold and comforting. He stood upon a mote of marble floor, a copper-roofed pavilion overhead. Something curled and snaked just beneath the edge of the marble, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It didn’t match the rest of the Void - in place of arcane blue and whale skin-gray, there was gore-red and olive green. He watched it like a hawk, dropping into a crouch and moving like a whisper across the elegant floor. Corvo peered over the edge of the island, down into the misty abyss, and saw an odd, humanoid construct of rose-vines scuttling off out of reach. He made to blink down after it, but a sudden exhaling rush of breath and the sound of a body crumpling to the floor startled him into turning around.

Upon the floor a young man lay, familiar in his looks and unfamiliar in his position. His throat was cut, a precise wound like the work of a master butcher. Instead of a ruby spill of blood upon the marble beneath, a well of seawater flowed from his wound, snaking across the tiles and rising up at the pavilion's edge to fill the underside of the roof. He fell to his knees at the man’s side, slipping a careful arm beneath his shoulder and a broad hand cradling his head. The saltwater was warm, body-hot, as it soaked his clothes. At the touch of his hand upon the young man’s hair his eyes fluttered open, revealing irises of peridot green streaked with opal blue. Corvo very nearly recoiled in shock – those eyes were supposed to be otter-black, with no trace or white or color to them. Something was very wrong.   
  
“Oh, dearest Corvo.” The young man said, his voice sounding as if he spoke both from deep underwater and within Corvo's mind itself. “I never would have wished this upon you. Not even to keep me entertained forever more.” His hand came up to cradle Corvo’s own cheek, warm and wet. “I would have given you anything, my love, had you asked for it.” His thumb stroked over Corvo’s lip and the faint burn scar there. The young man began to weep silently, pulling Corvo’s head down and bumped their foreheads together. At the touch of skin to skin, the young man dissolved into a flood of warm saltwater that overflowed and filled the pavilion, leaving Corvo adrift in an amniotic cage.   
  
When Corvo woke, he could not move. The cultists had chained him to the ceiling, arms suspended above his head so he knelt on the freezing metal floor. His mouth felt cottony, and he distantly realized they planned to keep him drugged the whole time he was within their grasp - smart. He would have done the same, in their position. His blinking eyes recognized the brig of a ship, heavy door sealed tight. In what little light filtered through the porthole, he saw the dark lines of the Outsider’s Mark, its familiar radiating spines and central line a familiar comfort in dark times.

In the ten years since the interregnum, the Outsider had been a frequent visitor to his dreams and nighttime outings across Dunwall. He had been his usual cryptic self, levitating off the ground with void-stuff warping the edges of his form. One night, while Corvo staked out a drop point for the Hatters, the deity had flickered into existence next to him, carrying a satchel over his shoulder and a rough-woven wool blanket folded under one arm.

“Care for a little company, dearest Corvo?” he had drawled, balanced catlike on the roof next to him. Corvo had looked from the Outsider back to the drop point. It had been hours, and the contact hadn’t showed, so he shrugged and motioned to the shingles. The Outsider had then unfolded the blanket and spread it out, motioning for Corvo to sit upon it. The satchel had been opened to reveal two vacuum-flasks; one held a thick, hearty stew of blood-ox and barley and the other was full of Serkonan hot cocoa. A spoon and a cloth napkin were produced and presented to Corvo with a dramatic flourish and a hint of a smirk. His otter eyes had glittered under the starlight, and he laughed at the bewildered look on Corvo’s face.

“Come now, dear Corvo, can’t I do something nice for one of my Marked every once in a while?” he had teased, and Corvo ducked his head to hide his smile.

“Usually when you appear a crisis is right on your heels.” Corvo replied, taking the spoon and flask of soup from the Outsider and tucking in. “However, you would have brought me into the Void if that was the case. What brings you to this particular rooftop tonight, Outsider?”

“Just as I stated, simply the pleasure of your company. And don’t bother coming back here tomorrow night; the Hatters found out that one of their number snitched to your network and they killed him. This drop is defunct, and will remain so for months.”

“... noted. And thank you. For the information, and the food. I haven’t eaten much today.”

“I know.”

They had stayed on that roof for hours, shoulders brushing as they gazed at the stars and Corvo slowly polished off all the soup. There was something in the Outsider’s face he could not place, a strange softness that Corvo had never seen before. Perhaps it was just the starlight, but Corvo - well.

Corvo knew what he wanted from the Outsider was impossible. Gods didn’t love mortals, even _fascinating_ ones.

He had fallen asleep eventually, the length of the day and the sense of safety the Outsider provided weighing down his eyelids. When he drifted back awake, he opened his eyes to find he was back home, placed gently on top the duvet on his bed in the Tower. A rune had been placed upon his bedside table, its song-vibration quiet in the dawn light.

Now Corvo, loathe to bother the Outsider at all, called out to him.

“Outsider.” he whispered, staring at his Mark. “If there was ever a time you could help, it is now. Outsider, _please._ ”

His voice reverberated against the metal walls of his cell. Minutes passed, and Corvo could feel the sedative beginning to claw its way back into his brain.

“Outsider?”

Still, there was no reply. No warping of space to reveal marble flesh, soot-ink hair, and otter eyes. Nothing.

Corvo’s head dipped, chin brushing his chest, and he pretended the dripping of water was from condensation on the ceiling.  
  
He didn't know how long they kept him in his cell. They fed him nothing but rich eel broth laced with sedative, and in the time between his meals and the onrush of drug-induced sleep he heard the cultists whispering to one another outside his cell:   
  
_" - almost to the trench, only a few more days - "_   
  
_" - going to work? Should have just found the Knife and slit him - "_   
  
_" - lost to another pawn of the Outsider - "_   
  
_" - work better anyway, it's the deepest place in the world, closer to the Void than Shindaerey Peak - "_

 _“ - sure the timing is right? Copperspoon will ascend if we don’t - ”_   
  
Their words meant little to him, but the mention of the Outsider and the Void rattled him - he thought of the strange, uncanny rose-vine figure. Something was happening, something momentous, but his clouded mind couldn't grasp precisely what, so he let the creeping grasp of the sedative pull him into dreamless sleep once again.   
  
Eight broth-meals later he was slapped awake by a bucket of near-scalding water dumped on his head. Corvo shuddered in his bonds, weakly attempting to twist out of the hard-handed grasp of the cultists as they cut his filthy clothes from his body. They scrubbed him nearly raw with milk-soap in a clinical, businesslike manner, and dried him in much the same way before anointing him with whale-oil. They left him bare but for a cloak of feathers around him, made from the stolen plumage of ravens. A wreath of hydrangea sprigs was placed in his graying hair, and then the cultists were pushing him down the hall from his cell and up onto the deck of the ship.   
  
At once Corvo was assaulted by a freezing ocean wind that made his cloak flap with its force, goose-flesh creeping up his limbs. There were nearly four dozen cultists that he could count, and even if he wasn't drugged and half starved he doubted he could defeat them all and sail back to Dunwall on his own. Each of their faces was hidden behind a driftwood mask, the twisting sun bleached branches bolted together with iron rivets. The deck was lit by the pale face of a full moon and numerous whale-oil lamps clutched in their hands. The cultists holding him forced Corvo to his knees, hoisting his Marked hand aloft, and their leader raised his hands to the sky and began to chant.

Something about the guttural words made Corvo's head swim and throb, as if they were winding one of the Abbey's music-boxes. He was vaguely aware that even in the freezing ocean air he was sweating bullets. As the chant went on, the Mark began to glow and burn. There was a pulling sensation, as if something was trying to tear the very bones from his hand, and a flash of light from the Mark as it burnt itself away, leaving uninked olive skin in its wake.

Corvo knew his time as one of the Outsider’s Marked had been limited. The interregnum and the strife it had brought was long past, and now the only action Corvo could offer the Outsider was the occasional capture of a would-be-assassin or getting caught in inter-gang warfare. So lost was he in his own head he hardly noticed when they dragged him towards the side of the ship, where a gap in the railing led off into the endless black. The rest of the cultists began to chant, their lamps casting flickering light across their distorted masks as the two flanking him looped a noose of whale-sinew over his head. Corvo blinked the fog from his eyes and saw a massive whale vertebra covered in familiar scrimshaw looped around the far end of the rope.   
  
And it all clicked at once.   
  
Corvo thrashed in their iron grip with the ferocity of a trapped animal. More cultists caught hold of his limbs and lifted his undulating form, and he howled when they tossed him overboard into the black ocean.   
  
Water filled his nose and mouth as the noose tightened around his neck, the vertebra dragging him down, down, down. Ice crept into his fingers, and he twisted in his bonds in a futile attempt to escape. He held on as long as he could, the noose and ocean choking him, but finally inhaled a lungful of salt. Bubbles exploded from his mouth, and his vision fuzzed. The ice was inside him now, searing his lungs and reaching talons around his furious heart. It _squeezed_ , and he choked the last of his oxygen out into the abyss. His mind relinquished its control lover his limbs, and he could only watch impassively as his body was dragged down to the ocean floor. Swarms of pulsing jellyfish and needle-toothed eels watched, their gaze neutral, as he fell. All the myriad creatures were chased away when _something_ emerged from the darkness.   
  
A whale, gargantuan in size, with barnacles encrusting its head and the ends of whaling harpoons broken off in the flesh of its back.   
  
It's great eye watched his body as it fell, and it swam ever downward with him, keeping pace with near lazy strokes of its great fluke. He looked back at it as he sank, and its barbels twitched as it began to sing. Its voice rattled his soul, and the dark of the ocean began to glitter. Motes of glowing color flew past him, creatures of every size and shape that produced their own light, and his hair billowed in the current. The song rose and fell; it was a song of mourning and welcome, a song that needed no language for one to comprehend it.   
  
Corvo Attano felt his soul’s fragile tether to his body stretch like a harp-string, vibrating in time with the whale’s voice, and he felt it as it _snapped_.


	2. The God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so chapter one actually went through a long rewrite because i got Ideas™ and wanted to implement them, so if you read that chapter previously, go back and read it again and tell me what y'all think!

Tired eyes fluttered open, revealing glowing pools of arcane blue light.  
  
Their owner, who looked like a man but was clearly not _just_ a man, stared up at the unending expanse of silver-blue light above him. It was studded with floating islands covered in ruins of grand palaces and city streets, between which clouds of prismatic vapors curled like cats in the sun. Through the clouds, magnificent whales of all sizes and species cruised, their eerie songs resounding into distance in a strange, benthic choir.

The not-man sat up and felt resistance at his throat. He reached up a hand and felt that a rope, oddly textured and smooth, had been looped into a noose and tightened around his neck firmly enough to bruise. A sudden burst of animal fear caused sweat to break out on the not-man's forehead, and he scrabbled at the noose to dislodge it from around his throat. He wriggled it up over his head and flung it away as if it were a venomous snake, scrabbling backward on his hands and feet.

At the first backward motion of his hand he touched not cool slate but soft, velvety feathers. He looked down, and beneath his naked legs was a veritable river of midnight-black feathers that shimmered with opalescent light. The not-man startled again, leaping to his feet - but too quickly. His vision was overtaken by black spots and his head throbbed, causing him to sway on his feet. He threw out his arms for balance and let out an odd, croaking cry when the feathers - no, they weren't just feathers, they were _wings_ \- snapped out in response. They were long and elegant, like the wings of a raven. He flapped them and wobbled across the floor, eventually finding a balance to walking. He folded them and looked around again.

The whale had come back. It looked at him for a long moment, floating just beyond the edge of the island, and hummed a bone-rattling note. The not-man took slow, careful steps as he approached it.

“Who are you?” he asked the whale, starlight eyes wide with wonder. To his surprise, the whale’s song warbled high and low, as if it was laughing. And then it _spoke._

 _“An amusing question from the one with no name. But since you asked, I am known as Shadow-of-the-Moon.”_ The not-man smiled at the whale.

“Thank you, Shadow-of-the-Moon. What do you mean, that I have no name? I cannot remember, but I know that I have one…”

 _“You were given to the Void, sacrificed, by a cult enamored with its power. During their ritual, they choked the name from you with_ that.” the not-man looked behind him at the odd artifact - the rope looped around a whale vertebra, covered with intricate scrimshaw. _“Names have power. By taking yours just as you drowned, they made you the avatar of the Void, a stable conduit for magic between it and the material plane.”_

“Why would someone want to make an avatar of the Void, if magic is part of the world anyways?”

_“Because humans are lazy. Instead of learning how to carve upon stone, they use whalebone because our every particle is imbued with magic, and it stabilizes their shoddy runework. They want an avatar to entreat for power, an avatar they can control. In all the thousands of years that humans have interacted with the Void and tried to bend it to their will, they have never once succeeded in creating a patron that looked kindly upon them after their rituals.”_

“What have other avatars done?”

_“The most recent acted as an observer, marking those he favored and gifting them with extensive powers. What you make of your time in the Void is up to you. However, as a sort of… welcome gift, I suppose, the whales would like to present you with a title to use during your tenure in the Void.”_

“I…” the not-man chewed his lip. “I would appreciate that, Shadow-of-the-Moon.”

 _“Then climb onto my back, little god.”_ He stepped up onto the whale’s great fin, and carefully scrambled up their broad side and sat cross legged upon their head. With a stroke of their great fluke, they were flying through the Void, between the prismatic dust clouds and an archipelago of floating islands. As Shadow-of-the-Moon rounded the rocky jut of an island, an otherworldly, bewitching sight greeted the young god.

Whales, an innumerable amount of them, swirled in a column around him, the Void sparking at the edges of their flukes and barbels. Their collective song seemed to shake the very structure of the Void, and the young god knew that their voices could birth stars and devour worlds.

Shadow-of-the-Moon drew close to a smaller island blanketed in a soft layer of emerald green moss. At the shift of their massive body, the god slid down onto the ground. The whale swam up to join their fellows, and he watched as the song rose and fell around him.

 _“Welcome, young god.”_ the whales sang as one, and the god could feel the notes rattling his teeth. _“The whales welcome you to the Void, and we grieve for the loss of your name. Your being calls out for it, and we offer a surrogate that would match its sequence.”_

The young god looked up at the whales, his eyes glassy with emotion. “I would accept the name the whales would give me, and I thank you for the generosity of your people.” At this he felt the eyes of the whales upon him, and he felt pierced by their gaze. One, two, three heartbeats passed and the song fell silent. All at once it returned, the force of the song driving him to his knees. The song rose and fell, and he felt as if the song were slicing open his soul and deciphering the very make up of it. As soon as the song started it stopped, leaving the god gasping on the ground.

 _“We name you the Ravenking.”_ the whales decreed. _“The gloaming-god, regent of corvids, father of storms, he who calls the thunder. We name you the Ravenking.”_

At the newly-named Ravenking’s knees, the green moss of the floating island began to bloom; thick lines of tiny white flowers which drew themselves into a sigil-shape: a stylized winged figure, with a wide tail trailing behind it. He stood, looking up at the whales swimming above him. He spread his wings, their inky feathers shining in the strange ever-present light of the Void. Then he spoke, voice strong and ringing.

“I am the Ravenking.”

He broke into a sprint, launching himself off the moss-island and into the abyss. Wind screamed past his ears, ruffling his hair and feather-mane, and then he snapped out his wings to catch the breeze and lift himself up through the column of swimming whales. His muscles worked furiously as he beat his wings, soaring higher and higher. Something was building in his chest, a great energy he knew would overflow at any moment. Still he kept soaring up, up, up. Magic sparked along his wingtips and eyelashes, and at last he shut his starlight eyes and let the energy overtake him. The Ravenking felt his body warp and distort, folding in on itself. Smaller and smaller he became, and when he opened his eyes again he was a magnificent raven, feathers onyx black and glossy. The Ravenking let out a short, whooping caw as he turned to look back at the whales.

They had begun to disperse, flowing off in pods to every corner of the Void, but Shadow-of-the-Moon had followed him at a sedate pace, great sweeps of their fluke propelling them after the Ravenking. He flew forward and looped around their head, cawing in delight before alighting upon their nose.

_“In time, you will discover the full extent of your powers, Ravenking. Shapeshifting seems to be just one of them.”_

“Thank you again, Shadow-of-the-Moon.” the Ravenking said, focusing once again upon his form, and he shifted back to his humanoid appearance. “The name you have given me may not be mine, but it will serve me well.” He looked out at the endless pale blue expanse of the Void, speckled with floating islands, and felt a great, sudden sadness for something lost beyond recall.

* * *

 The Ravenking dreamed.

He dreamed of crushing cold above him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. Searing heat was at his back, and in the cone of his vision he saw red liquid rock smoking and bubbling in the water around him. It flowed up and around his body, forming a round shell of black rock around him. He tried to sit up, but something was looped around his neck - the rope, the whalebone anchor, he began to scream -

And then gentle hands cradled his face, elegant fingers and cool palms that stroked through the scruff on his chin with bottomless tenderness. He opened his eyes and saw a man, his youthful face sharp cheeked and marble skinned. They floated together in a regally decorated room flooded to the ceiling with warm water that cast an otherworldly green light over everything. The young man’s hair drifted in an unseen current, tiny bubbles slipping from between his parted lips.

“Dearest Ć̷̢̧̧͎͉͓͕̫̖̱͐̀͆ȍ̶͎̮̻̒͋̆̿̎̂̕ṛ̸̤̽ͅv̴̭͔̥̮̻͇͔͑o̸̻̣̍̔̑͑̚,” he whispered. The Ravenking could not decipher the second word the man said; it was anathema to his mind and he could not comprehend it, but it was _important_. “Do not fear, my love. You may be beyond me, now, but know that you will always be dear.” Then the young man pressed his lips to the Ravenking’s, passing his breath into the god’s lungs with a kiss.

The Ravenking let out a harsh gasp and sat up, chest heaving as he sucked in deep breaths, hand at his throat. He had fallen asleep on a larger island, one covered in soft grass with a great twisting hydrangea tree growing from its center, tucked into a comfortable crook between roots. He stood and shook out his wings to align the feathers, then touched his fingers to his lips. Who was the young man? Every instinct in the Ravenking insisted that he was important, a constant, his significant as sure as the rising sun. He looked off into the Void, watching as a pod of whales cavorted with one another in the distance, and decided to ponder it another time.

He raised his hand, fingers spread, and pulled magic into his fingertips. They glowed arcane gold, sparking into the air. He moved his hand in a great arc, as if forming a doorway in space. The light trails left behind in the air folded and unfolded until they were an angular filigree border around a shimmering portal. The Ravenking examined his work, circling around it and waving his hand behind it to see if it was transparent - it was not. Perhaps, he thought, he could open a similar doorway in the material plane? Shadow-of-the-Moon had mentioned that he came from there, and it would be… fascinating to look at it from the perspective of a god.

Something sparked in his mind - a place: _warm sun beating down on cobbles, the gurgling of a fountain, market stalls laden with trade goods._ It was a memory; a warm, bright one that comforted the Ravenking and dispelled the last of his fear left over from his dreaming. He knew the name of this place too.

“Square of the Silver Lion, Batista District.” he murmured, a small smile blooming on his face. The portal’s mirror-bright surface shimmered and reformed. In place of a featureless gold expanse, beyond its intricate borders was a view from a rooftop of a bustling market square bathed in morning light. It was full of people in simple clothing on their way to work, shopping for necessities, or simply enjoying the day. The Ravenking, delighted by his work, made to step into the portal when he paused. It would be unwise to walk among humans as he was, with his inky plumage, broad wings, and voluminous feather-mane. He drew back from the portal and concentrated once more, taking the form of a raven before hopping through the portal. With a single step, he moved from the familiar solitude of the Void onto a shingled rooftop heated by the sun, and was immediately bombarded with a multitude of sounds and smells.

People chattered and shouted, haggling and hawking their wares. The smells of fresh fish, baking bread, and cooking meat hung in the air, and the sound of rushing water originated from an ancient fountain in the middle of the square. Enchanted, he took to the air, gliding above the crowds and alighting on one of the higher tiers of the fountain. He balanced his way around the rim of the bowl, taking small sips from its cool depths. As he gazed into the water, he saw shining coins of all sizes, glittering enticingly in the sun. The Ravenking made to snatch one up in his beak when a chord was played on an instrument of some kind behind him, the note snatching his attention back to the crowd.

A young man stood before the fountain, facing out at the marketplace with a guitar in his hands. A newsie hat was placed upon the cobbles in front of him as a place passers-by could place a coin or two. Having caught the attention of a few market-goers, the young man began to play. The notes were quick and light, his fingers flying across the frets and hand strumming energetically with his little pick. Then, the young man began to sing.

_“We're on the permanent red_

_The glaze on my eyes_

_When I heard your voice_

_The distance caught me by surprise again_

_And I know you claim that you're alright_

_But fix your eyes on me_

_I guess I'm all you have_

_And I swear you'll see the dawn again._

_Well I know I had it all on the line_

_But don't just sit with folded hands and become blind._

_'Cause even when there is no star in sight_

_You'll always be my only guiding light.”_

The song was an outstretched hand, a song of hope, and the Ravenking could see the combination of the man’s expert playing and clarion voice ripple through the crowd. Coins were produced from pouches and pockets and purses, and soon the man’s hat was weighed down with shining discs of metal. When the man strummed the final chord, the crowd erupted into applause, a last wave of thankful coins filling his hat. As the man bowed to the crowd with all the grace of a grandmaster bard, the Ravenking felt moved to gift him something as well.

He flew off from the fountain and returned to the rooftops, gliding over them until he found what he was looking for: copper wire, a little river stone, some silver dust. He assembled the materials in a little pile on a balcony out of sight, then plucked three feathers from his tail and set them atop the pile. He inhaled, filling his chest, and let out a hum; the closest approximation of a whale song he could manage in his current form. The Ravenking infused his voice with magic, focusing on etching the river-stone with his little talon. His voice soared high and low, and after a minute of his song the materials had rearranged themselves into a little charm. The river stone now had his symbol imprinted into its gray-green marbled surface in the silver dust, and his tail feathers were joined to the stone by a weblike net of the copper wire. It would keep the musician’s voice strong and clear as long as he kept it nearby, and he grasped it in his talons before flying off over the crowds again.

He found the man speaking to a woman at a baker’s stand, their demeanor towards one another friendly. The Ravenking alighted atop the stand and made to drop the charm atop the man’s head when the woman caught his eye - or more accurately, _her_ eye caught his eye. It was a shard of red-black crystal, and it radiated magic and the energies of the Void. It was impossibly old, and he knew at once that it was part of an old, long dead avatar of the Void. The woman’s arm, too, was non-euclidean - its mechanical parts jabbered and sung to him, and there was something… _wrong_ hidden in it, a wrongness that reminded the Ravenking of the whale skin noose and bone anchor.

He ruffled his feathers to calm himself, and flapped his wings. He circled above the musician once, then dropped the charm into his outstretched hand when he gesticulated at the woman. Startled, the man looked up, and the Ravenking was struck by his eyes - they were swirling green and blue, with flecks of gold in their oceanic depths. Like marbles, the Ravenking thought as he cawed once and flew off again. He opened the portal again and returned to the Void, reverting to his usual bipedal form when he alighted on a floating island.

The Ravenking looked back through the portal at the Square of the Silver Lion, eyes sparkling with delight. What a strange, wonderful world he had come from. He would definitely visit again, he thought to himself, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song the man sings is "Guiding Light" by Mumford & Sons - it's goode shit

**Author's Note:**

> corvo is essentially a blade warlock of the great old one with some OP as fuck eldritch invocations (misty step at will, anyone?) and i love the roleswap trope with warlocks and their patrons so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
